Sunday, 17 August 2014

It’s official: the stats have shrunk.
It’ll be illegal to be sick by 2020.
Disease has been cut. So don’t
develop ME, rheumatism or any
strain of mental imbalance
or you’ll be pawning breadsticks
for psychotherapy sessions.

Don’t catch STDs or smoke yourself
to infertility. Don’t have an accident
on your front porch without a fully
comprehensive insurance policy:
there’ll be no beds to death-rattle in,
no emergency staff at hand to yank
gadgets out of children’s noses.

Don’t bank on anything other than
this one minute detail: that sickness
will be cut when there is no longer
a service for it. The league tables
will see to that. Just watch how
cancer dribbles off the NHS menu,
how hip replacements halve to a halt.

There’ll be no future docs with nous;
just the stupid, rich ones who can
foot the bill and bribe their way into
the medicine cabinet with a sharp
wrench at daddy’s little finger. So
don’t get sick any time soon. There’s
a time and a place. But it’s not here.